March 04: Recipe for an Old-Fashioned Vote

Ingredients
Experience
Beliefs
Values
Concerns
Hopes
Dreams
Issues
Candidates
Intelligence
Expectations
Public Opinion

Tools
Two large bowls
One small bowl
Initiative

Step 1 Measure equal parts of the first four ingredients into the first large bowl. Using your Initiative, mix to create Perception. Season to taste with Hopes and Dreams. Set aside.

Step 2 Using the small bowl, measure and mix one part Issues with two parts Candidates to define Options. Set aside.

Step 3 Weigh your Intelligence, and place in the second large bowl.

Step 4 For every ounce of Intelligence, add one ounce each Perception and Options to Intelligence. Using your own two hands, mix well.

Step 5 Turn the mixture onto a smooth surface that has been lightly dusted with Expectations. Knead your Perception, Options and Intelligence mixture until a strong yet flexible Decision emerges.

Step 6 Expose your Decision to Public Opinion for 60 minutes.

Step 7 Transfer your Decision to an appropriate Polling place. Follow the Polling Process to convert your Decision into a Vote.

Step 8 Compare your Vote to overall voting season results. Your Vote may not match overall results. This does not reduce the importance of your Decision or the value and durability of its ingredients.

Notes:

• Friends, family members, neighbors, newspapers and radio are all excellent sources of Public Opinion. Your Decision may change shape, size and texture as a result of public exposure. If it loses strength or flexibility, expose to Public Opinion for an additional 15 minutes.
• Steps 7 and 8 may be completed only during voting season. Your Decision remains relevant and valuable indefinitely, and may be refreshed any time new ingredients are available. For every additional ounce of intelligence you’ve gained, add another ounce each of Perception and Decisions.
• The Polling Process may take anywhere from 15 to 60 minutes, depending on your location and the weather. This duration does not affect your Vote. Your Vote is completed when you leave the Polling Booth, and lasts forever.

Ready to go gourmet? Find one issue or topic that interests you, and follow it to its conclusion. Your efforts to create a gourmet vote of your own ideally include consistent tracking through one newspaper or magazine (reading is more effective than just watching!), and attendance at a public forum such as a city hall meeting or a candidate debate.

Secrets of the Pros revealed! Professional voters adhere to the basics, such as refreshing Views and finding new sources of Public Opinion. They also mix their topic-tracking across multiple media outlets, and regularly attend public meetings and forums.

March 08: Represent

Until recently, I happily and knowingly took our democracy for granted. My vote and my representation were as inviolable as the North Pole. It was unthinkable that either might ever erode in any number of foreseeable lifetimes.

Then, in 1994, I became a resident of Sarasota, Florida. And in 2000 I saw little clips of paper called chads enable our then-Governor to legally leverage electoral votes to his candidate-brother, which in turn caused the candidate that received the most Presidential votes to lose. Then came the 2006 election, after which not one Sarasota County election official, lawyer, judge, or GAO expert could account for an undervote of 18,000. Now we have 1.5 million Democratic primary votes cast that do not count toward Presidential candidate selection, and we're gearing up for Presidential candidate selection by a few "superdelegates" that are publicly debating their accountability to voters.

These events have sliced through my confidence in our democracy just as sure as icebreakers have now sliced and sailed through the North Pole. I don't know which is eroding faster, our democracy or our climate. I do know that we can no longer take either for granted, and it is within our power to correct both. And that is what I intend to do.

Democracy first. Our democracy is a damn fine idea made real. I think it is worth fighting for. Our first step? WAKE UP!

Unlike the Supreme Court in 2000, and Sarasota County election officials in 2006, I WILL NOT shrug my shoulders and say "Oh, well. Good enough, I guess." I WILL NOT join the powerful chorus of voices that say "Get over it!" I WILL NOT help turn Abraham Lincoln's warning into prophecy by participating in the destruction of our democracy from within.

If I am the last person to stand up for the Democracy I read and fed on in my junior high textbook, I WILL resurrect and join the voices of those first Americans that dumped tea into Boston Harbor. I WILL be represented, and I WILL be counted. Until then, I WILL, with every breath and vote, shout "REPRESENT!"

Published by Sarasota Indymedia March 09

Civil Disobedience Stirs in Sarasota

Did you see this SH-T Forum posting on Sarasota tent cities? http://forums.heraldtribune.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/3941081465/m/7431051858?r=5771076068#5771076068

The author’s expressed wish has come true: public words have sparked public dialog. In turn, public dialog has revealed much more.

First, the open comments in response to the forum contribution illustrate a sharp divide in both opinion and insight on the very timely topic of Sarasota-based economic refugees. Those with glib or even snide responses are legitimate contributors, yet I can't help note that they are woefully under-informed and mercifully inexperienced on this matter. The majority of people who are living in existing Sarasota and Bradenton tent cities (both open and secret) are average, normal and responsible people who experienced many months of household budget cuts: Cable, telephone, AC/heat, beer and other luxuries are long gone by the time a tent city becomes a viable and even desirable option. The details of their stories may differ; the broad strokes are similar.

Second, the prospect of a Sarasota tent city is a top-of-mind topic among Sarasota’s Limousine Liberals. I attended the DESC annual fundraiser last night, and over the $8 cocktail that preceded my $100 plate I learned that a Sarasota tent city is being considered or planned. A little bit of Googling this morning added healthy flesh to the subject’s bones and led to this response. (Please note that I am no Limousine Liberal, and am circling the event horizon of foreclosure myself. At this point, $108 is not going to make or break my outcome and it was well invested in learning the mood, dialog, and priorities of self-proclaimed difference-makers.)

The gift of public discourse on the local ravages of our global economy has revealed an important and (IMHO) fabulous fact: Civil disobedience has started. Neighbors have banded together to hide a tent city from authorities. Another’s voice has drawn a line in our local sand over selective law enforcement. Somewhere in my college days I coined the phrase, “What this country needs is an economic Martin Luther King.” Today, I can hear the far-off thunder of his or her voice rumbling its way toward Sarasota. What better place to illustrate the real fulcrum of the socio-economic divide. It is so very much closer to every back yard than most realize.

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

16 May 2008: Count My Vote

Today, I received an email that invites me to attend a “Count Our Vote” rally at the Democratic National Headquarters (DNC) in Washington, DC.

That we have the right to increase the power of our individual voices via mass protest has long been a blessing of US citizenship and a model for the rest of the world. The blood of people who have died to gain and preserve this right pools in histories and textbooks.

That we must exercise this right before the locus of our democracy is cause for deep and abiding shame.

The unthinkable has become reality. Our teachings have become our misgivings. Our heritage has become our hypocrisy.

American States, beware! Your sister State of Florida is no outsider, is no foreign country, is no runaway tyranny. It is a United State in America. It is your children’s playground. It is your parent’s home. It lavishes riches on your table. It votes, and its votes are not counted with due process or accuracy.

Your sister State of Florida goes before you in this fight. Your sister State of Florida laughed with you as Florida was made the butt of every political joke in 2000, 2004, and 2006. Your sister State of Florida is now a Receding Democracy despite the purported protections of our constitution. Your sister State of Florida has already fought in every court of law and public opinion with one request: Count My Vote!

Pay attention to that news clip that shows individuals gathering and speaking at the DNC. Mute the media and listen to your own voice respond to your fellow Americans begging for just one thing: Count My Vote!

Can you picture yourself there? Can you hear your voice? Can you feel your own representation, expectations and rights slipping away? Can you hear Abraham Lincoln’s voice saying, “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

I know you can. And I know you join Florida as she begs, “Count My Vote!”

I write like

Dan Brown

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Great Expectations

I entered the world of adults with great hopes very low expectations for myself. I did not know it at the time. It is only hindsight that makes the lack of plans, goals and expectations clear.

It was not enough to simply do, advance, succeed, get better, perform better, earn better, live better. I needed a plan. I did not plan. My motivation and objective was one and the same: survival. I survived.

Yes, I survived. And without a plan I got to a high rung of the ladder anyway. I climbed high enough to see that I had my ladder propped against the wrong wall. What wall? Whose wall? I don't know. And I doubt that it matters.

So I've climbed down the ladder, pulled it away from the wall, and am looking around for a new wall. I know it needs to be my own wall, I don't have one, and I don't have the energy or materials to build a new one.

Is no wall an option? Can I just put the ladder down and walk away? Sure. I don't know how to survive that way, either.

Today, I seem to buckle under the weight of the slightest of expectations. My goals are the same, and yet I don't trust my footing on any path. My capabilities have lost their market value, and in this world, a person's market value is equivalent to survival.

I don't know how to survive anymore, and don't know if I will.

So I write.

State of Seige

This is America. An adolescent nation that has burned through the blessings and wealth granted at its birth: unlimited optimism, energy, intelligence and resources. An adolescent nation that chose to revel in the glory of its easy brilliance and power, rather than learn from the experience of elder nations and civilizations culled by the ecstasy of belief in limitless accumulation of wealth and power.

Ask any of the gods and souls that have watched this human race for millennia. Ask any global cousin who remembers when America was cool. The tipping point always comes, and balance is always restored. The fissure--call it Achilles Heel, weakest link, fatal flaw--is omnipresent and in time, predominant. The fissure eventually assumes its role as restorer of balance.

These United States of America are no exception. The fall of Rome took place over multiple generations, and the fall of my country of birth has happened within my lifetime. Twenty-plus years ago, when I wrote about the possibilities and prospects for Universal Heath Care the easiest and best solution--make the rich poor--was inconceivable. Now it's reality.

The Barbarians at the gates of Rome were uninvited Goths and Huns. The Barbarians at America's gates are our creditor nations. They were poised and ready to plunder our wealth when we invited them, one T-bill at a time, to cross our threshold. They never shook a single sword at us or rattled a single sabre. They watched us mummify ourselves with the paper of our own debt. Their ownership of our nation was a bloodless gift of our own greed.

We are in a siege state right now, and the consequences of our decisions are coming due. Our health has been eroded by the indifference of all and the greed of a few: We do not have the breath or body to fight. The lowest common denominator of our education has been driven to sub-basement levels: We do not collectively possess the education required to sustain Democracy. Our natural and economic resources have been devoured and digested by decades of imagined hunger without thought for replenishment: We do not have the money or materials to restock, let alone rebuild. And now we discover, in hindsight, that the most powerful among us--those that have had first and greatest knowledge of our siege state--have been anesthetizing our fears with distractions and platitudes while they cannibalize our very lives and livelihoods.

As will happen in any siege state, the common wells have run dry and the shared stores are empty. The community is starving while the few get fat. At some point, the disparity is too great to hide and the greed of the few is revealed. As is the case with America today, they have been discovered.

What to do. Acquiesce to debt? Collaborate with our creditors? Overthrow the regime? Throw the fat cats to the Barbarians? Declare national bankruptcy? Wait for hyperinflation? Sell California? Thin the herd?

Hope will not do. Hope is never enough. Hope is the opposite of action.

Change is no achievement, it is inevitable. Change does not even require action or participation.

Recovery is the new watchword of the day. We're trading in our expensive, debt-loaded illusions of prosperity for something called Recovery. Recovery from what? The answer is too heavy, ugly and dark to contemplate for long. It is a tar pit of accountability and despair that we are not strong enough to face.

Is it possible to recover without staring our reality in the face? Can we simply move forward toward new goals, or old goals with new direction?

Only if we learn.

I write like
Dan Brown

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Every Rich Republican Represenative's Worst Nightmare

The rich are poor.

It's that simple, and that deadly to the self-serving so-called Representatives that have populated every level of US government for decades.

Sure, it's all relative. Whether you started with $5 or several million, if you've lost 50+% of your income and reserves, you're equally poor and equally angry. Angry at yourself, because you bought into "trickle down" economics and believed there were no consequences to the easy plunder. Angry at yourself because you sold your future for the instant gratification of American largess on steroids. Angry at the people, motives and decisions that are outside your control and hidden behind walls and laws.

Suddenly, the dearth of an educated, healthy workforce is chunking away at what relative wealth remains clutched in the hands of the rich.

Suddenly, decisions motivated by greed and the needs of the wealthy and powerful are no longer justifiable. The valildating voice of the wealthy and powerful has dwindled to a whisper.

Suddenly, representation without representation is revealed.

Suddenly, Socialism is not a dirty and foreign word. It's a solution.

I write like
Kurt Vonnegut

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

There's nothing wrong with me

Despite the way I feel, I am assured by myself and those close to me that there's nothing wrong with me. I am many things, good and bad, and all intersect at normal. This reassurance offers distant comfort.

Well, normal sucks. I know how far from optimistic my life experience has taken me when I recall first reading that life is nasty, brutish and short. At the time, I resolved to continue my positive approach and thereby prove that mighty opinion wrong. Even if my own was the only life experience that contradicted that opinion, that was enough.

Today, the sum total of my experience leads me to know that life is nasty, brutish and short anyway. It's all relative, and no amount of positivism can change the basic fact that life is nasty, brutish and short. Between our unique moments of birth and death, it's how we respond that matters.

So how do I respond? Ruthlessly. Over the past few years, the content of my ruthlessness has changed from optimistic and logical to confused and direct. Both content sets are inherently contradictory.

Contradiction is the pervasive context of my life's content. Every self-improvement achievement, personal enlightenment milestone and lesson learned comes down to the resolution of contradictions. In some other content bundle, contradictions might be resolved one way or the other: If A and B contradict, then A or B is the resolution. In the content bundle that is my life's experience, the resolution is never A or B. Resolution is the integration or intersection of A and B, after noise is factored out and the lowest common denominator of experience is found.

What contradictions have been resolved, and which remain? Each one is worthy of specific attention, and thanks to this public journaling experiment I have started a list. I'll get to them all, just as they all got to me. In the meantime, I'll offer an in-the-moment example.

At this moment, my contradiction is that I am both transmogrifying and stagnant. Unlike the transmogrifier of Calvin and Hobbes fame, my transmogrification process involves no control of outcomes and is not a painless procedure. The procedure requires erosion, corrosion, disintegration and every other form of destruction required to clear the path for construction.

This process has been in spiral play in my life for at least three years. While I recognize the value and purpose of the destruction I have nonetheless resisted every turn of the screw, and with each turn attempted to desist my attempts at control. That, too, is a process. Perhaps this time I have accepted that resistance is futile. Destruction is inevitable, as is construction. Passive does not agree with me, and activitiy creates resistance.

How long to the still silence of the true nadir?

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Are you there, planet? It's me, Moira.

I hereby welcome me to blogging.

To anyone that reads this in part or full, either one time or as a faithful follower, I offer a few tips:

• It's all about me. This dialogue is me talking to me. Writers write, so I'm writing. You are listening, maybe commenting. If you comment, I will reply.
• Don't expect anything. This is an evolving, broad-range dialog. Have no expectations and you won't be disappointed.
• Ping me.  I want to hear from you any time, any way. 

That's it. Let's go.